The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club (30 page)

Mother looked at me, and I shrugged.

“Certainly,” she told him.

“Aside from the fact that you somehow got privileged information from the dating service, there’s something else that concerns me more.” He pulled on his lip, squinting like Clint Eastwood, before he dropped the A-bomb. “I worked for the revenue service for thirty years, ma’am, and I still have plenty of friends there. In fact, I had one of ’em look you up, just to see what I was getting myself into,” he said, sounding way too sure of himself. “Or rather, I had ’em look up Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson.”

Cissy glanced at me again, and I saw the lump go down her throat as she swallowed. “You don’t say?”

“Yes, ma’am, I do say, and I found out something you’ll find very interesting.” He unfolded his arms to scratch his jaw. “It turns out that no such person as Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson exists. Not one living, anyway. Last woman by that name died in nineteen and sixty-one. She was the first female governor of this state for a while during Prohibition, though I’m guessing you already know that.”

Oh, she knew, all right, because I’d warned her someone else besides me had recalled what they’d learned in Texas History,
I wanted to say, but kept my trap shut.

“Really? Hmm, that’s all very intriguing, but there must be some mistake,” Mother murmured, trying to act nonchalant, slipping her glasses back on, only they were turned upside down. She plucked them off again and stuck them in her purse. “As you can see, I’m as real as it gets.”

Real?

This coming from a woman buried beneath an inch of makeup, wearing borrowed clothes, and a wig that looked a lot like Cousin It.

“Oh, there’s no mistake.” He set his forearms on the table, his gaze shifting between us, not looking at all amused. “So, you mind telling me who you really are and what the heck you’re doing?”

“Oh, dear, look at the time!” Cissy grabbed her purse and started to scoot. “Goodness, Andrea, we’d better go. We have that . . .
thing
to do.”

“Yes, that thing,” I echoed and followed her lead, sliding toward the edge of the booth.

Only Stephen Howard wasn’t about to let us go anywhere.

He swiveled in his chair, crossing his legs so they blocked Mother’s escape route and planting a hand on the end of my booth, which meant I either had to stay or climb across his shoulder.

I stared at Mother, willing her to get us out of this.

In a pickle, that’s what we were, getting shaken down by a Navy veteran who’d served in ’Nam and spent three decades with the IRS.

Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.

“Whatever’s going on, why don’t you tell me the truth? Maybe I can help, if you’ll let me,” Mr. Howard offered, his masculine tone so earnest, his pale eyes pleading with Mother, wearing her down, as evidenced by the slump of her shoulders.

She glanced over, and I shook my head. Firmly. Decisively. If I’d shouted, “keep your big mouth shut,” I couldn’t have been any clearer.

And for a whole second or two, she stayed mum.

Then she cracked, faster than Humpty-Dumpty taking a swan dive toward the sidewalk. “I’m Cissy Blevins Kendricks of Beverly Drive in Highland Park, and this is my daughter, Andrea . . . I’m really a blonde, and I do believe I have an allergy to synthetic fabrics. . . .”

Name, rank, serial number, hair color, shoe size.

You name it, she coughed it up to good ol’ Stephen, telling him that both Bebe and Sarah were dead—which was news to him, judging by the surprise on his face—and explaining that she was “looking for closure” by finding out as much as she could about the last days of their lives. At least she didn’t use the words “undercover” or “serial killer.” Though that hardly reassured me.

I imagined a swarm of government agents descending on us, weapons drawn, handcuffs at the ready to arrest us for . . . what exactly? Impersonating a dead governor? Lying to blind dates?

Okay, maybe
that
wasn’t going to happen; but, at the very least, he’d think Mother had gone off her medication, and I was aiding and abetting her delusional bender.

I shrank into the booth’s corner, waiting for her to finish. If the man had any sense at all, he’d do what the rest of us did on really awful setups: make the usual excuse that he had to use the rest-room, then he’d flee like a bat out of hell.

Only this guy didn’t seem to be budging.

After Mother finished her sob story about seeking peace by tying up the loose ends in the lives of her two deceased friends, Stephen palmed her hand in his and patted gently, saying things like, “there, there,” and offering use of his pickup truck to haul Bebe’s and Sarah’s packed-up personal effects to FedEx.

By the time I was able to drag Mother out of the IHOP, it was nearly three o’clock. She’d decided to have a chef’s salad, while Stephen had ordered a burger, and I’d sat in the corner of the booth munching on a plate of onion rings, debating if I actually had the ability to turn invisible. I felt like it, the way the two of them ignored me so completely for a solid hour.

While Cissy went to use the powder room so Stephen could settle the check at the register (he had insisted, believe it or not), he caught my elbow and reiterated, “If there’s anything I can do, Andrea, you let me know. Your mother’s a good woman, and I’d like to help her, if I could.”

I wasn’t as sure as Mother that this Stephen Lloyd Howard could be trusted, but it wasn’t because I thought he’d dusted Bebe and Sarah Lee. My resistance had more to do with Cissy slipping him her unlisted home phone on a napkin (yes, right under my nose). It’s not the kind of thing a daughter wanted to see, particularly one who was such a loyal daddy’s girl.

Still, I squashed my misgivings, because I had something I could use a hand with, and Stephen Howard seemed the perfect guy for the job. If he could pin down the nonexistence of Miriam Ferguson so quickly, then he could surely find the answer I needed in a snap.

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Howard . . .”

“Stephen, please.”

“Okay, Stephen. There is one thing you could do,” I said and proceeded to explain, writing down two names on the back of my business card, circling my cell number and asking him to call ASAP.

I had a weird sense that someone else wasn’t who she was supposed to be either.

After Mother and Stephen had exchanged “goodbyes” in the parking lot, I put the IHOP in my rearview. I switched on the radio, but Cissy shut it off again, preferring instead to relive each moment of her pancake house encounters with Tom and Stephen, coming to the conclusion that neither could’ve harmed her friends.

So she was fluctuating between Elvira and the bug spray man.

I considered tossing Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet into the mix, but instead I kept my eyes on the road and just drove.

A
s far as I was concerned, we couldn’t reach the gates of Belle Meade soon enough. After I waved to Bob at the guardhouse, Cissy insisted we go straight to Bebe’s place. I wondered if Mrs. Pinkston would be expecting her to return to Sarah Lee’s, but Mother didn’t seem to care. She wanted to take off her wig for a while and, as she put it, “let my head breathe.”

I think she really wanted to lie down and nap.

Which was okay by me.

I wanted her to stick around the house for a while, anyway, until I heard back from Stephen. When my cell phone rang not long after Cissy had ascended the steps to upstairs, I thought it might be him.

Instead it was the doctor’s wife, Patsy Finch, who’d gotten my number from Annabelle. She’d had a chance to go through the medications I’d dropped off earlier and claimed I’d left something out.

“I emptied their medicine cabinets, Patsy. There wasn’t anything else,” I assured her. “What you’ve got is what they had.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Did she think I’d snatched a vial of pills, or a bottle of Maalox?

For crying out loud.

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Andy, really, that’s not it.” Still, she sounded worried enough. “But it’s . . . odd, that’s all. Can you take another look around, see if there’s anything you might’ve overlooked?”

“What’s going on, Patsy?” I wanted to know. “What’s so odd about missing a few vials?” Both women were gone. It’s not like they’d need more pills.

“I’ve got patients waiting for pickups, but maybe you could come by in thirty minutes. After you give Mrs. Kent’s house another pass, okay?”

“All right.”

She hung up, and I stood with the phone in hand, staring at it for a minute. That pang of uneasiness settled in my belly again, only it felt stronger than before. Like something was really off, and I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

I slapped my cell shut and trudged upstairs to Bebe’s bathroom, opening cabinets, rummaging through drawers, even checking out her night tables, merely scoring a metal tin with Bayer aspirin.

Surely, this couldn’t be what Patsy had been so concerned about.

I crossed the hall and made my way to the guest bath, where Mother extricated bobby pins from her hair, after having removed the Wig from Hell.

“Is there something you need, darling?” she asked, as I maneuvered around her, searching nooks and crannies, finding extra bars of soap and tiny shampoos stolen from hotels around the world, but little else.

“Patsy Finch said all of Bebe’s medications weren’t in the bag I dropped off this morning. Have you seen any other prescriptions lying around?”

“No, sweetie, can’t say that I have.”

Regardless, I went back downstairs, combing through the marble-filled bath off the foyer, tackling the kitchen after that. I managed to add a couple bottles of vitamins to the Bayer, which I dumped in another baggie.

I yelled up to Mother that I’d be back in a bit and please not to go anywhere.

“Where would I go without my hair?” she called down from the top of the steps, holding the black bird’s nest in one hand and a brush in the other. “I’d blow my cover.”

“I like you better as a blonde,” I told her.

“That’s what Mabel said this morning.”

“Mabel?” Uh-oh. “Why would she say something like that? Did she see you last night when she delivered our dinner?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t that,” Cissy assured me. “She merely suggested I’d look better blonde than brunette. That’s all. Don’t be such a worrywart. The woman is perfectly harmless.” She held the wig to her chest and stroked it, as if it were a cat. “I do feel sorry for her, Andy. When she pushed up her sleeves while we were packing, I saw those awful scars on her arms, and I told her I knew a fabulous plastic surgeon who could do wonders for her. But I think she was embarrassed.”

“Not everyone believes plastic surgery is a cureall, Mother.”

“And they are so wrong, darling.”

I shook my head, and she grinned.

“Keep the door locked,” I told her. “And stay put.”

I took off in the Jeep for the main house, driving faster than the eleven-mile-an-hour limit. She’d be fine, I told myself, figuring I wouldn’t be gone long besides.

The pharmacy was part of the clinic where Dr. Finch saw his patients, in the same wing as the gym, physical therapy, and the salon.

A chime went off softly as I entered, and Patsy peeked through a cutout in the wall.

“Good, you’re right on time. The doctor only has a few minutes before his next appointment,” she said and gestured that I come around through the door marked
PRIVATE
, which led to a rear office.

Behind an imposing walnut-stained desk sat Dr. Finch in white lab coat, the dozen or so vials I’d previously delivered spread out before him, along with a pair of patient charts.

“Did you find anything?” Patsy asked, coming in behind me and closing the door, so that I felt a bit like a caged rat.

“Just these.” I handed her the baggie with the aspirin and vitamins, which she eyeballed then shook her head.

“That can’t be all of it.”

“But it
is
,” I insisted, as she scurried over to her husband’s side, showing him the baggie and eliciting an even deeper frown. “I looked everywhere humanly possible, and there wasn’t anything else. So why don’t you tell me what’s up? Maybe I can do something about it.”

“Go on, Arnie,” Patsy said and nudged her husband. “She’s a smart girl. Maybe she can help.”

Dr. Finch cleared his throat. “We seem to be missing the same medication from both Mrs. Kent’s supply and from Mrs. Sewell’s.”

“What if they ran out and didn’t get a chance to refill?” I suggested.

They exchanged a glance. Then Finch told me, “No, that’s not the case, Miss Kendricks.” He tapped the manila folders. “Our records show that refills were delivered to each of the women very recently.”

“How recently?”

He cleared his throat again. “Just before the patients died.”

Hello!

“What was it? Narcotics, sleeping pills?” I walked up to the desk, gazing at the multitude of vials scattered on the green blotter. “Could they have overdosed?”

I wondered if Mother had been right about her friends dying before their time, only getting the “how” part wrong. Maybe it wasn’t murder at all, but suicide.

“It wasn’t narcotics or sleeping pills,” Patsy said, the grim set of her mouth at odds with her childlike features and sky-blue headband. “What’s missing is an antihistamine, Andy, a generic drug called hydroxyzine hydrochloride. Mrs. Kent and Mrs. Sewell both took ten milligrams at bedtime for allergies.”

I laughed, despite their serious expressions. “Allergy pills,” I repeated. “That’s what you’re so freaked out about?”

Arnold Finch opened his mouth, but Patsy squeezed his shoulder, and he clamped his lips shut, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “It was hydroxyzine Pamoate, in this case,” she said. “It comes in oral suspension, drops that can be mixed with liquids. It’s easier to swallow, as some of our patients have trouble taking so many pills.”

“Drops, like you give kids.”

“Just like that, yes.” Patsy nodded. “The drug is very effective for allergic reactions, but they’re also used as tranquilizers. Around fifty to one hundred milligrams is often given to patients to sedate them before surgery.”